Instant (e.g., “scratch-off”) lottery tickets are a popular lottery product and a significant source of revenue for various states and other governmental entities. In order to increase the popularity and sales of such tickets, it is becoming increasingly more common to link the tickets to activities other than the single game play embodied on the ticket. For example, many states have established web-based functionalities wherein a player can register the ticket for various secondary activities, such as second-chance drawings for losing tickets, player reward accounts wherein tickets (winning or losing) are registered and accumulate points for subsequent exchange for value, player loyalty programs, and so forth. With these conventional programs, a web address and access code are printed on the tickets, which allow for the player to enter a lottery sponsored site for registering the ticket for the offered programs.
With the conventional systems, the access code or a separate unique registration number provided on the ticket is compared against a database of the complete set of tickets printed for the respective game to achieve at least some degree of authentication of the ticket. This method, however, has a significant drawback in that the lottery is vulnerable to attempts to register unsold or even non-existent tickets. For example, a person having access to the ticket pack in a retail establishment can copy the registration codes from unsold tickets and register the tickets to take advantage of the secondary activities (e.g., point accumulation, drawings, etc.) without ever purchasing a ticket.
In another fraudulent activity referred to in the industry as “fishing”, manual or computer-implemented attacks attempt to generate random codes that are accepted by the web-based system. For example, a person having general knowledge of the format of the access code or registration number can generate and submit random codes having the same format with the expectation that at least certain of these fraudulent codes will actually match authentic codes in the system.
The present invention provides a methodology and related system for securely enabling secondary web-based activities linked to individual lottery tickets that avoids the drawback of conventional methods and systems discussed above.